“You really should lock this door,” he said as he stepped inside.

“Why? To keep out the riffraff?” I asked teasingly, then cocked an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged. “Well, you left it unlocked and look what happened.”

I nodded and gave him a serious frown. “I can see what you mean. Maybe I should get an extra bolt,” I replied.

Krit grabbed his heart. “Ouch,” he said, then fell back into the chair, facing me. “That was deep, love. Fucking sharp.”

I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair. “You’ll survive. I’m positive of it.”

Krit propped up both of his feet on the coffee table in front of him and studied me for a moment. “Come tonight and listen to the band. We’re at Live Bay again because of a scheduling change this week. You can sit with Trisha. You didn’t get to hear much the other night.”

This was where us being friends was going to be difficult. Telling him I had a date with Linc to see a movie shouldn’t be a big deal. But for some reason it was hard to say so out loud. I didn’t want him to think Linc was more important, though I had a feeling Linc wasn’t asking me out again because he wanted just to be my friend.

“You have plans already, don’t you?” he said before I could come up with something to say that wasn’t awkward.

“Linc asked me to go to the movies with him tonight,” I admitted. I had no reason to feel bad about this. No reason at all . . . but I did. Dang it.

Krit let out a sigh. “Fine. He asked first. It’s all good. But Thursday night I’ll be playing at Live Bay, and I want you to come.”

Okay. We could do this. He was making it easy, and I was making it harder than it had to be. “Deal,” I agreed.

Krit nodded, but he didn’t seem happy. “You eating on this date?” he asked.

Linc hadn’t said anything about dinner. He’d just invited me to a movie. I shook my head.

Krit pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Good. I’m starving. What time is he going to be here?”

“Six,” I replied.

“That leaves us with two hours,” he said, and a smile had replaced his frown. “Thai or Italian? Or do you want to get those fajitas from that Mexican place again?”

He was ordering us takeout. I didn’t want to feel that squishy feeling in my chest that made me feel tingly. At least not where Krit was concerned. But oddly enough, he was the only person who managed to trigger that feeling.

“Not that hard of a question, love,” he said, reminding me that I needed to answer him.

I had bad memories of Thai food. “The fajitas sound good.”

“That’s my girl,” he said as he dialed the number to the Mexican place. I knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but I had never been referred to as belonging to someone before. The simple my girl meant more to me than he realized. In fact, if he knew how deep that struck with me, he would run off again—and this time he’d possibly never come back.

I studied my screen like I was actually thinking about what to write next, but I listened to Krit order food. He acted like he belonged there in my place. Maybe that was supposed to freak me out, but it didn’t. It did the exact opposite.

When he hung up, I had gathered enough courage so I could turn to him and blurt it out before I realized how stupid I sounded.

“Can I take a picture of us on my phone? I don’t have a picture of us . . . and I’d like one.”

Krit glanced around the room, as if noticing for the first time that I didn’t have a picture of me with anyone, and then his eyes came back to me. “Only if you text it to me so I’ll have it too.”

Smiling in relief at him not laughing at me or running off again, I stood up and walked over to him. Before I could figure out how to take the photo exactly, Krit grabbed my hand and tugged me down onto his lap. “I’ll take it and send it to you,” he said, then pressed a kiss to my cheek and snapped a photo with his phone. Laughing, I pulled away to tell him I wanted one where I could see his face, but he grabbed my head and pressed my face to his cheek like I was kissing him and took another photo.

When he let go of my head, I saw the wicked gleam in his eyes and laughed harder. “Look at the camera, love,” he said before sticking his tongue out and licking the side of my face.

Shoving him off me and wiping my face with the palm of my hand, I couldn’t even pretend to be grossed out. It was the first up-close view I had had of his tongue piercing, and I was a little more than fascinated.

“Most women beg me to lick them, and I give it to you for free and you push me away,” he said with a fake pout on his face.

“You’re crazy.” I giggled.

“I’m the good kind of crazy, though.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him about that. He was definitely the good kind of a lot of things.

“There, I sent you all three of them. And I’m posting one on Jackdown’s Instagram because I’m so f**king photogenic.”

I wouldn’t disagree with that. “Hmmm” was the best I could do in response. Telling him he was anything less than beautiful was a lie. I needed to get up and off of him. I started to move, when his hand clamped down on my leg. “Hey. I didn’t say you could get up yet,” he said as he messed with his phone. One hand stayed on me as if that was all it took to keep me here.

When he was finished posting the picture, he looked up at me. “What’s your Instagram?”

“I don’t have one.”

His pierced eyebrow shot up. “Everyone has Instagram. Why the hell don’t you? Face like yours needs to be shared daily.”

How was it that he could say the sweetest things one minute and the dirtiest things the next? I shrugged and hoped I wasn’t blushing. “Don’t really do social media. Never have.”

Krit didn’t push me to say more, although I could see he wanted to. It was like he knew my boundaries and didn’t cross them. One day, if I was ready to talk about my past, he was the only person I could imagine talking about it to. But not right now. I wasn’t there yet.

“Want to see a picture of me with long hair?” he asked, changing the topic and moving his attention back to his phone. The amused look on his face when he found it made me want to take a picture of him. I loved how expressive he was.

“Look at this,” he said, tugging me closer so he could show me his phone instead of handing it to me. I tried not to think about being all cuddled up to him, and I focused on the picture.

His hair was the same color, but it brushed his shoulders. He looked like a surfer gone alternative. His face was younger too. “How long ago was this?”

“About three years, I guess. I hated it long, but the girls liked it,” he explained as if that was the answer for everything. The girls would like him without hair. Surely he knew that.

“I like it better now,” I told him, and moved back again. Being so close to him that his breath tickled my skin was too much.

A knock sounded on the door, and Krit pinched the inside of my thigh. “Food’s here,” he said before taking me by the waist and standing me up.

“Already?”

Krit shot me a crooked grin and shrugged. “The owner’s daughter and I know each other.”

Not surprising. I wouldn’t be requesting Mexican again. No! Wait. That was not the correct response. I shouldn’t have cared about what females Krit knew. He and I were friends. I wasn’t going to ruin our friendship for him or me.

“I’ll go get the plates,” I told him.

“You got sweet tea?” he called out after me.

I stopped and thought about lying to him. Telling him I ran out of stuff to make it. But I didn’t want to lie, and there was also a chance he might see the tea bags if he went through my cabinets.

“No, I don’t have any made,” I replied, then hurried into the kitchen.

KRIT

If she had just said no then I wouldn’t have noticed. But she’d stopped and frozen up on me for a minute. That was what gave her away. And I felt like a piece of shit. I was a piece of shit. Damn it. She loved sweet tea, and she’d been so proud of herself for making it right. And I had screwed that up for her by being an ass.

Well, she was gonna make some more sweet tea, damn it. I was gonna stand right there with her while she did it. If I had to stand over her daily, she was gonna keep sweet tea in her fridge because she liked it. I didn’t want her associating it with a bad memory. Not when teaching her how to make it was one of my favorite memories.

I placed the food on the table and headed into the kitchen. She was getting two plates, and the frown on her face told me she was worrying over the sweet tea thing. I didn’t deserve her time. I wasn’t good enough to get her sweet smiles, but she gave them to me anyway.

“Where’re the teabags at, love?” I asked, walking over to stand behind her.

She tensed up.

I placed my hands on her shoulders and gently squeezed. “I was an ass**le. You scare me, and I didn’t know how to handle it at first, but I’m good now. I won’t run off on you again. I don’t think I can even if I want to. The idea makes me f**king sick to my stomach.” I stopped because I had opened my mouth and was saying all kinds of shit I had no business saying. Regrouping, I finished. “We’re gonna make some sweet tea. And every time I come over here, you better have your sweet tea in the fridge. Not for me, but because you like it. I want you to have the things that make you happy.”

She relaxed under my hands and then she nodded. “It was silly. I should have kept making it,” she said, then turned to slay me with the most sincere, honest, f**king precious smile on the face of the Earth.

There was a tight painful feeling in my chest that was completely unfamiliar, but it hurt like a motherfucker and breathing was difficult.

“I’ll get the tea bags and sugar. You boil the water,” she told me, completely unaware something was happening in my body that was freaking me the hell out.

I managed to nod and move over to the stove. Fumbling, I filled the pot with water. No reason for the clamp on my chest to be there. What was wrong? She had smiled at me. That was it. Sweetest smile I’d ever seen, but still, it was just a smile.

“The other night, that was my first date. Not just with Linc, but my first date ever. I’m not good with guys. I don’t understand them, and sometimes I do things that I shouldn’t and react ways that are ridiculous, and I don’t realize it. So, if I do something dumb or say the wrong thing, just tell me. I promise, I’ll get better.”

I couldn’t turn around and look at her just yet. I knew I needed to because that was the most she had shared with me about her past, but f**k, how could I look at her while I processed this? Fury, confusion, bafflement, and pure icy cold jealousy swamped me at one time.

Her first date? How in the hell was that possible? She was almost twenty years old. Did they keep her locked away in an attic?

I tried hard not to let the fact Linc had been her first at something eat me alive. I wasn’t going to date her. I didn’t date, for starters. I tried that once, and I sucked at it. But I didn’t like sharing her either. She was mine. No, she wasn’t. She was my friend. Boundaries. I needed some boundaries in my head. Blythe was my friend. She made me happy. She was not mine. She never would be because I didn’t want someone to be mine.

“You’re not moving.” Blythe’s voice sounded worried. I was worrying her.

I let out a breath and relaxed my face into what I hoped was a casual expression. Glancing back over my shoulder, I gave her a reassuring smile. “From what I’ve seen, you’re pretty damn near perfect. Don’t apologize. Anything that happened with us before is because I’m f**ked up. Not you, love. Never you.”